Mary And The Giant

He did not expect that Dave Gordon would find her; the boy would search for a while and then go back to his gasoline station.

But there were others who might. Some of them had found her already.

That evening, after work, he remained in the store by himself, preparing a Decca Christmas order. The dark street was quiet; few cars moved by, and almost no pedestrians. He worked at the counter with a single light on, listening to one of the phonographs playing new classical releases.

At seven-thirty a sharp rap startled him; he looked up and saw Dave Gordon outlined in the doorway. The boy made a sign that he wanted to come in; he had changed from his uniform to a stiff, double-breasted suit.

Putting down his pencil, Schilling walked over and unlocked the door. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Her family doesn't know where she is either," Dave Gordon said.

"I can't help you," Schilling said. "She only worked here about a week." He started to close the door.

"We went down to that bar," Dave Gordon said. "But it isn't open yet. We're going to try later. Maybe they know."

"Who is 'we'?" Schilling asked, stopping.

"Her father's with me. He doesn't have a car of his own. I'm driving him around in the truck."

Schilling looked out and saw a yellow service truck parked at the curb a few spaces down. In the cabin of the truck was a small man, sitting quietly.

"Let's have a look at him," Schilling said. "Tell him to come over."

Dave Gordon left, stood talking at the truck for a time, and then he and Edward Reynolds returned together.

"Sorry to bother you," Ed Reynolds murmured. He was a slender, lightly built man, and Schilling saw some of the girl's lines in his face. There was a nervous tremor in his arms and hands, an involuntary spasm that might have been a suppressed abundance of energy. He was not a bad-looking man, Schilling realized. But his voice was thin, shrill and unpleasant.

"You're looking for your daughter?" Schilling said.

"That's right. Dave here says she worked for you." He blinked rapidly. "I think something's happened to her."

"Such as?"

"Well." The man gestured and blinked again. He twisted on one foot, his hands opening and closing, a shudder of movement that reached his face and put a series of muscles into activity. "See, she was hanging around with colored people down at this bar. I think there was one, murdered a white man. It was in the newspaper." His voice trailed off. "Maybe you noticed it."

This was her tormentor. Schilling saw a small man, in his middle fifties, a workingman hunched with fatigue from his day at the plant. The man, like most human beings, smelled of age and perspiration. His leather jacket was stained and crinkled and torn. He needed a shave. His glasses were too small for him, and probably the lenses were obsolete. Around one finger was a ragged strip of tape where he had cut or hurt himself. There was nothing evil or sadistic in the man. He was as Schilling had expected.

"Go on home," Schilling said, "and mind your own business. All you can give her is more trouble. She has enough of that." He closed the door and locked it.

After a conference with Mr. Reynolds, Dave Gordon again rapped on the glass. Schilling had returned to the counter. He went back and opened the door. Dave Gordon looked embarrassed and the girl's father was flushed and humble.

"Get out," Schilling said. "Get out." He slammed the door and pulled down the shade. The tapping began again almost at once. Schilling yelled through the glass: "Get out or I'll have you both arrested."

One of them mumbled something; he couldn't hear it.

"Get out!" he shouted. He unlocked the door and said: "She isn't even in town. She left. I gave her her money and she left."

"See," Dave Gordon said to the girl's father. "She went up to

San Francisco. She always wanted to; I told you."

"We don't want to bother you," Ed Reynolds said doggedly.

"We just want to find her. You know where in San Francisco she went?"

"She didn't go to San Francisco," Schilling said, half-closing the door. Then he went over to the counter and resumed his work. He did not look up; he concentrated on the Decca order sheet. In the darkness Dave Gordon and Ed Reynolds came softly into the store toward him. They stopped at the counter and waited, neither of them speaking. He went on with his work.

He could feel them there, waiting for him to tell them where she was. They would remain for a while, and then they would go to the Wren, and there they would find out where she was. And then they would go to her room, the room in which she looked out at neon signs. And that would be it.

"Leave her alone," he said.

There was no answer.

Schilling put down his pencil. He opened a drawer and took out a folded piece of notepaper, which he tossed to the two of them.

"Thanks," Ed Reynolds said. They shuffled away from the counter. "We appreciate it, mister."

After they had gone, Schilling relocked the door and returned to the counter. They had carried off the scribbled address of a San Francisco record wholesaler, an outfit on Sixth Street in the Mission District. That was the best he could do for her. By ten o'clock they would be back, and then they would go to the Lazy Wren.

There was nothing else he could do for her. He could not go to her, and he could not keep others away from her. In her twenty-dollar-a-month room, not more than a mile away and perhaps as close as a few blocks, she sat as she had sat in the restaurant: her hands in her lap, her feet together, her head slightly down and forward. He could help her only by not hurting her; he could keep himself from doing her further damage, and when he had done that he had done everything.

If she were let alone she would recover. If she had always been let alone she would not need to recover. She had been trained to be afraid; she had not invented her fear by herself, had not generated it or encouraged it or asked it to grow. Probably she did not know where it came from. And certainly she did not know how to get rid of it. She needed help, but it was not as simple as that; the desire to help her was no longer enough. Once, perhaps, it would have been. But too much time had passed, too much harm had been done. She could not believe even those who were on her side. For her, nobody was on her side. Gradually she had been cut off and isolated; she had been maneuvered into a corner, and she sat there now, her hands in her lap. She had no other choice. There was no other place for her to go.

He wondered what it would have meant if her grandfather had not died, or if she had had another father, lived in a bigger town, known somebody she could trust. What sort of person would she have been? He could not believe that she would be much different. The fear, possibly, would be more deeply buried; layers of complacency would hide it, and nobody would realize it was there. He did not feel like blaming her father. He did not imagine that Carleton Tweany was responsible for letting her down, or that Dave Gordon was somehow culpable for being young and not very bright or very perceptive. The guilt-if there was any guiltspread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. Across the street a man had parked with his lights on to examine his rear left tire; perhaps he was the person to be considered responsible: he was as good as anybody. He, also, was a participant in the world; if he had, at some early time, made some particular gesture he had not made, or refrained from some gesture-then perhaps Mary A

Perhaps, at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed. But he doubted it. Nobody had made Mary A